


Men May Be Made Gods

by lonelywalker



Series: A Particularly Bad Period in History [1]
Category: Miracle Workers (TV)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Power Dynamics, lots of ducks, wildly anachronistic fantasy history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:00:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22736842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: In retrospect, when the prince said, "My dad really loves cock," Vexler should've filed that somewhere in his brain other than the drawer markedChauncley's Poultry-Related Nonsense.
Relationships: King Cragnoor/Lord Chris Vexler
Series: A Particularly Bad Period in History [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698502
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38





	Men May Be Made Gods

**Author's Note:**

> Written following 2x03, where the cold open is basically an extended meet cute between Vexler and the king that might as well have cartoon hearts and Hallmark-style kisses thrown in.

Vexler knew his place.

When he was small, his mother would always find him by the fire, any fire, flames dancing in his pupils as he tried to soak in the heat, lock up the warmth and take it with him to their frigid, damp shack where the cold seeped into his bones every night. His people, he had always felt, were from somewhere warmer, some place where the sun blazed year-round. But he had never had any idea where that place might be. The sun? The ends of the earth? Just past the Forbidden Mountains on the border of Valdrogia? That was five days’ travel and almost too far to imagine.

His people, whoever they were, had left no books or writings to give him answers. An oral tradition was only useful if there were people who actually paid attention to the songs and stories, and his mother had never exactly been the attentive type. So he’d grown up with a name from nowhere that meant whatever he wanted it to mean, and a deep, deep longing to be warm.

“Fire’s for the king,” his mother would say when he complained about the injustice of having to be wet and cold. “When you’re king you can have a big bed piled with furs by a roaring fire. You’ll even be too hot then.”

Too hot. Vexler hadn’t believed then that he could be too hot even on the surface of the sun. But he hadn’t believed in kings then, either. Kings were vague even in the ballads: benign old men who invariably had three sons, the big brave one, the big dumb one, and the little cunning runt. Vexler had seen a kindred spirit in the wily youngest son, who would win kingdoms through out-thinking his opponents and using his brothers’ bodies as stepping stones to the throne. It was very clear he would never be able to win one through physical might - even play-fighting with sticks had left him with stinging fingers, bruised ribs, and a determination never to face anyone wielding a real sword. So he was going to have to make his way to the castle through trickery and deceit and…

And then he met the king.

Lower Murkford was home to people who, logic said, were from everywhere: in every street and alley you'd find a different skin tone and accent. But like Vexler, everyone from Lower Murkford was, in the end, from Lower Murkford, with the same mortal beaten-down spirit beneath the superficial differences.

Cragnoor, Vexler was adamant, was not from Lower Murkford.

Priests and oracles occasionally declared that the king was a god. Vexler had never been convinced that some snotty-nosed kid, just like any other snotty-nosed kid, would grow up to be a god just because his dad won some war and jammed a metal crown on his head. 

Cragnoor, though… Cragnoor could have been a god the first time Vexler saw him up close. Vexler was fifteen, more or less a man. Cragnoor was a fucking colossus walking down the muddy street in his armor, his boots coming down with such certainty in every step, as though the earth itself wouldn’t dare to let him slip. His sword had been the length of Vexler’s entire body, had been the length of many men’s entire lives. And his voice…

“Where is there a blacksmith?” he asked in tones that made smaller children scatter.

Vexler looked up at him, into dark eyes, and heard his own eerily steady voice reply: “I’ll show you.”

Ten years would pass before he made it to the castle, but he’d been Cragnoor’s man from that moment on. 

It had taken time and effort and luck to climb through the ranks, but less deceit and backstabbing than he’d anticipated, although a fair amount of literal backstabbing meant he swiftly grew eyes in the back of his head and most other body parts. From footman to butler, from royal counsel to lord - every step was a risk, a leap into the unknown. But Cragnoor was always watching, always there.

One night, he was so used to the king’s watchful gaze perpetually being on him that he had no idea how long Cragnoor was standing in the doorway like just another armored statue or palace guard. But all it took was one absent glance up from the endless columns of figures he was double-checking, those figures that sang with a harmony that sometimes let him fall asleep, for the wicked electricity of fear and anticipation to blaze through him.

“Your grace!” No one had ever taught him the correct way to address a king. He was reasonably sure no one knew.

There had been a battle or skirmish or some kind of macho showdown earlier in the day, which Vexler had taken as being no more concerning than Chauncley playing hackysack and - given the prince’s general lack of either sense or coordination - probably considerably less so. 

But here was the king, and something was _wrong_. A far deeper wrong than the sheen of blood smeared over his face and the normally pristine cuirass and helmet. 

“Vexler,” the king said. “Help me.” He looked tired, spent, his right hand gripping the elbow of his left arm.

Vexler held his breath and deliberately smacked his knee into his desk as he stood, just to make sure this wasn’t a dream. “Sire?”

“It’s not mine,” the king continued, irritably. “The blood, I mean. But those fuckers killed my horse.”

“Oh no, not Buddy? Valdrogian bastards.” Vexler tried to examine him up close without actually touching anything. “Do you… Can I…?”

Cragnoor winced and took a heavy step into the room. The room that was Vexler’s. Vexler’s room. Vexler’s bedroom. Where his bed was. Where he slept every night. Where, before sleep, he smothered himself in blankets and drove his hips into the mattress and his oiled hand and groaned the king’s name as he came. Which was a kind of prayer in a way.

“You’ll have to pop my shoulder back in,” the king said. “I can’t let any of them see me hurt, and Chauncley’s as likely to rip it off as put it right.”

 _Them_. Vexler swallowed. “Okay, I… Sure. You’d better… Would you like to sit down, your highness?”

The king closed his eyes briefly, as though steeling himself to have to move, then swept off his helmet and crown and sat down. On the end of Vexler’s bed. Vexler’s mind scrabbled to compartmentalize and focus on the king’s wounded arm, on dead horses, on just about anything but the idea that King Cragnoor was sitting on his bed with mussed hair, asking him - Chris Vexler - for help. His knees briefly considered buckling at the thought.

“You’ll have to take this off,” the king said, tapping his armor. “Sorry, but I can’t…”

“No, no, that’s… I got it.” Fear. He would focus on fear and that would chill his blood and keep him safe. 

The king was a concept, a living god, power and might made man. He could not be seen to be weak, and those who saw him weak would likely not live to pass on what they saw. Perhaps a sharp blade or crossbow bolt awaited Vexler at the end of this, once he deftly undid the buckles and pried away the armor from the king’s weary body. 

The cuirass came away with a sharp hiss of breath from the king. Vexler could see the bent edge, where the metal had been forced inward, against the king’s upper chest and the hollow of his shoulder. The padded shirt beneath was lined with blood. Vexler didn’t pause before unlacing it. One challenge at a time, without thinking about the fact he was undressing the king, or the equally true fact that the king was sitting shirtless on his bed. Thinking only about the problem.

“May I…?” he asked, because even touching the king seemed like a transgression, let alone gripping and manhandling his limbs into submission. But Cragnoor nodded, and Vexler reset his shoulder without giving a count or another word. The king didn’t make a sound, although his breath paused for a moment, and then he flexed his fingers, rotated his shoulder as though the whole thing was a minor inconvenience.

“Thank you, Vexler.”

Vexler swallowed and looked for another problem. The king’s shoulder was bruised badly, radiating out from a stark blue-black line, and far too much else of him was covered in a sheen of blood. “Let me…” Vexler started, then, as he did all too often, corrected himself to avoid being seen to give the king an order. “Would you allow me to clean off this blood?”

Another nod, although perhaps this one was accompanied by a look from those dark eyes that betrayed far more insight than Vexler would have preferred.

When he came back with water and clean rags, the king hadn’t evaporated like a dream or phantom. He was still very much there, very much real, and very much lying on Vexler’s bed. 

Blood. He had to think about horrible, disgusting, stinking blood as he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over the king. Better to dwell on rotting corpses in the battlefield than the tickle of the king’s hair against the back of his hand, the warmth of the king's body, or the way every careful brush of the rag revealed more clean, naked skin. 

Cragnoor kept his eyes closed even after the caked blood had been washed away from his face, but Vexler was sure he was awake. Awake and probably counting the ways he could disembowel his minister of the realm the moment this was over. Which was the only thought that helped Vexler retain even a veneer of calm as he washed the king’s neck, then his shoulder and arm bulging with the kind of muscle only repeated swinging of a broadsword could develop, his chest, his belly mostly flat despite an understandable liking for wine and banquets…

And that was where the blood ended, which was also where Vexler ran out of problems to solve. This, in itself, was a problem. Because the last five years in the king’s service had repeatedly shown that once he solved all the problems, he would simply find more. And, in the absence of any problems at all, he would make some. 

He swallowed and put down the rag, moving to take off the king’s heavy boots. Then he looked at the tie on the king’s braccae for a long, long time, already knowing what he would do, feeling his own cock stirring in earnest.

The adrenaline surge when he pulled the tie loose felt like it could knock him off his feet, but the king said nothing, did nothing. Just lay there, naked and glistening, on Chris Vexler’s bed. Vexler would have sworn that the king was half hard before he even touched him, although it didn’t matter much: he stiffened quickly in Vexler’s tentative grasp. He was so, so warm that it made the rest of the room feel colder, the air chill against Vexler’s hands. Warm and smooth, so that Vexler’s hand moved on him fluidly, the head of his cock already slick under his foreskin. Vexler palmed his own erection through his trousers, not able to take care of himself the way he would like, not even able to tear his gaze away from his hand on the king, trying to engrave the image, the feel, into his memories. 

The king came with a groan that was little more than a breath, and Vexler came too, hot and wet in his pants, watching the king’s come spurting over his shaking fingers.

When he could steady himself enough to risk looking at the king’s face, however, Cragnoor's eyes were still closed and he said nothing. Vexler cleaned them both up with another rag. And then he was just standing awkwardly in his own room, waiting for a certain doom that had evidently been tripped up by a duck in the corridor or found itself face-down drunk in a Lower Murkford gutter rather than tearing him limb from limb.

So, finally, he covered up the king with a blanket, hoping to avoid accusations of regicide through hypothermia, sat down at his desk, and went back to his book.

***

He woke up with Chauncley’s words in his head.

Early on in his tenure at the castle, Vexler had learned that the prince was his father’s opposite in every way: short, unathletic, obsessed with soft fluffy creatures rather than shattering skulls, and tending to babble utter nonsense for the vast majority of the time. All of which meant that Vexler had made a conscious decision to ignore Chauncley at every turn, given that the efforts of comprehending him far outweighed any benefits.

Still.

 _I think my father’s lonely._ When had he said that? It was clear as a bell now, as though Chauncley was standing over his shoulder. 

_You’re kind of like my mum._ Okay, Vexler remembered that one. Remembered that he’d rolled his eyes and sharply commented that having to babysit Chauncley and pretty much wipe his royal fucking ass for him did not make Vexler anyone’s goddamn mother (God rest the late queen’s soul).

 _My dad just really loves cock._ In retrospect, that should’ve been filed somewhere in his brain other than the drawer marked Chauncley’s Poultry-Related Nonsense.

Vexler sat bolt upright. Part of his book came with him, parchment sticking to his face. It was daylight. His bed was empty. How long had he slept? _How_ had he slept? 

In the half hour it took him to change clothes and scrub the stubborn ink from his face, he was still no clearer about what had really happened last night. Or, rather, he knew exactly what had happened but had no idea what it meant. He wasn’t dead, which was promising. But the prospect of it having meant absolutely nothing to the king seemed momentarily just as bleak. Vexler slapped himself across the cheek for being childishly sentimental and headed out into the corridor. Three ducks awaited him, clustered together as though gossiping. Vexler flipped them the bird.

The king was in the war room, dressing down a general and receiving cavalry reports. Vexler hung back, making his way around the edges of the room to where he could safely grab a book and pretend to be working on something that made him completely indispensable. That tactic only worked so long as there were other people in the room, rather than grown, bearded men almost shoving each other in their haste to get out of the king’s sight.

“Your grace,” Vexler said, bowing his head once they were alone and conversation was unavoidable.

“Vexler.” The king was studying his diorama. “What a mess. I tell our men to be prepared for anything, attacks and ambushes from any direction, high or low ground, and they persist in being as blinkered as horses and considerably less intelligent.”

Vexler’s strategy had been to become more or less invisible for the next week. But he couldn’t help himself: “If I may, my liege, it could be prudent to look for military talent a little further afield than the sons of your counsel. Peasant boys aren’t always best placed as front line fodder.”

“Are you volunteering as a recruitment officer?”

“If that is your wish… My thoughts are only for the wellbeing of the realm. And also so we don’t all get our throats cut in our sleep by rampaging Valdrogians. Blood is a bitch to get out of the sheets.”

Cragnoor gave the barest hint of a smile. “Your priorities, Lord Vexler, are, as ever, in order. My thanks for your service this evening past.”

“It was my honor and privilege, your highness.” Vexler paused only for a single breath. “Would you like me to serve you this evening also?”

The king’s eyes were impenetrable. “Yes, I would. But first please locate my son and ensure he isn’t about to bring the castle down around our ears. He said something about firecrackers from China…”

Enough said. “As you say, your majesty.” 

Locating Chauncley was easy enough. You generally just followed the fires, the screams, and - if all else failed - the duck poop. What was impossible was talking him out of something he’d already decided was an excellent idea. At least the cleanup, damage assessment, and bone-setting afterward were merely _almost_ impossible.

He returned to the castle after nightfall, washed the soot from his hands and face, and proceeded to the king’s chambers without daring to think about what might await him other than, well, the king himself.

Cragnoor’s interest in interior decor extended to swords and skulls, and absolutely no further. His chambers were therefore large and spacious while exuding a general air of sinister foreboding. The king himself, however, had divested of his formal black garments and was sitting at his writing desk in a loose linen shirt and trousers, examining a set of scrolls. “Vexler, good. Come in. What does ‘cogent’ mean?”

“Clear, I believe, your grace.” Vexler stood by the doorway, hands grasping the stone at his back. “Logical.”

“Ah, no wonder it was unfamiliar to me. How often do you bathe?”

“Excuse me, sire?”

“ _Bathe_ , Vexler.” The king waved a hand at a curtain, behind which Vexler could see the end of a tin bathtub, where steam was still rising.

Vexler tried to hit on a timescale somewhere between “overly vain” and “utterly revolting.” “Once a… fortnight?”

“Mm. Get in.”

“Get in?”

The king sighed. “Vexler, if I wished to have a conversation with an echo I’d spend the evening in the oracle’s cave. Remove your clothing. Get in. Bathe. Await further instructions.”

There was no question he could use a bath, especially after today’s events. Fortunately his mind had no shortage of other questions as he stood, awkward again, and disrobed while the king seemed to ignore him.

“Are you going to kill me?” Asking would do no good at all, but still the words passed his lips.

“What do you think?” The response was swift, brusque.

“I think… When you’re going to kill someone, you kill them.”

There was no response, which probably meant the answer was self-evident. The king turned and watched him as he stepped into the tub though, into the remarkably hot water that almost made him hop straight back out again. 

“You could do it quickly, right? So it might not even hurt?” Vexler was babbling to fill the silence, which was sure to get him into hot water of another kind. And in his experience, dying - whether it was through choking on your own blood or having your skull smashed in - always looked like it hurt. The only difference was how long you had to spend thinking about it. 

“I’m not an assassin, Chris. I suggest you turn elsewhere for a painless, quiet death.”

Vexler sank into the tub, letting himself be swallowed up by the water and every single one of those words in the king’s sonorous voice, but most of all _Chris_.

“So…” The king leaned forward, clasping his hands together. His gold skull ring stared at Vexler from ruby eyes. “Why the sudden preoccupation with death? Did my son make you bury a duck with full military honors?”

“That was last week.” Vexler shifted, finding soap under his left buttock. “I’ve heard… It’s not unusual for kings to eliminate those who see them in moments of weakness. You’re strong, you’re a god. You have to be invulnerable.”

Cragnoor’s smile was weary. “It’s not unusual for kings to be utterly mad. I’m not a god either, Chris. I’m a man trying to survive in the darkest of times, trying to make sure my son survives, and this is the only way I’ve found to do it, through murder and fear and supposed divine right.”

“Sounds lonely.” Vexler halfheartedly swiped at himself with the soap.

“Does it? Last night, I needed help and I knew immediately where to go. Where would you go, Chris? Would you come to my doorway and ask for help?”

“I’d…” He could picture himself stumbling through Lower Murkford in the darkness, searching out some healer who, for sufficient gold, would at most keep him from dying till the next morning. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“I feel perhaps this is why men have wives. Not carnal urges, not procreation. But someone who will…” The king’s long, long fingers twisted in an unusual display of restlessness. “I have not wanted for a wife. But I have wanted for this.”

“For what?” 

Cragnoor met his eyes. “For everything I cannot ask of you, because I am your king and you would rather lay down your life than deny me.”

Vexler’s lips parted. He swallowed. “What if you didn’t have to ask?”

“What if I wasn’t your king?”

“You’ll always be my king. But maybe you could be something else, something more… Some kind of…" Vexler scrabbled for a concept that didn't exist, not even in French. "Roi… friend?”

Cragnoor sighed and motioned upward as he stood. “Get out of the bath, Chris.”

He maybe moved two inches of his own accord, because after that Cragnoor was lifting him up like he weighed less than a tiny diorama knight and he was suddenly aware of how wet he was, water sloughing off him, drenching the king’s shirt, and how wet the king’s mouth was on his, and that no one had ever kissed him with tongue before, at least not there, and oh God was this treason or blasphemy or both or neither? 

“Fuck me,” he gasped when Cragnoor gave him a half-chance to breathe. It was, technically, an order, but there was no way he was correcting himself now.

Cragnoor laughed, one of his rare true laughs that wasn’t a precursor to blood being scrubbed from the paving stones. “Don’t worry, I will.” 

But they weren’t fucking. They were kissing like Vexler had rarely even seen a man kiss a woman, let alone two full-grown men whose beards snagged on each other. Kissing in a way that was something like fucking, not just a shallow greeting or shallower romance, an exploration of another’s body, another’s joys and pleasures and needs. Vexler had known that what he’d had in the past - fumbles with fists under covers, mouths traded for coin in alleys - wasn’t all there was, but _this_... He’d never imagined this.

Cragnoor’s fingers were in his hair, tracing his jawline, then powerful hands cupping his cheeks as he licked into Vexler’s mouth. Vexler felt like a slob accidentally entered in the Olympics, unable to keep up, unable to even really know what Cragnoor was doing to him because even the barest flicker of sensation went straight to his cock, already full and hard. Then Cragnoor kissed under his ear, in the hollow of his throat, and Vexler choked back a whimper.

“I thought I was the lonely one,” Cragnoor murmured in a voice that was lovely and low and somehow made Vexler’s cock ache.

“I couldn’t… A scandal… I’d be back pushing a vegetable cart.”

The king raised his eyebrows. “If you think it would be a scandal in this castle, I have a hundred ducks to sell you.”

“You don’t know…” Ordinarily he would never, ever contradict the king, but maybe he could argue with the man whose taste was on his lips. “You don’t know what it’s like living two steps away from sleeping on streets and being no one.”

“No,” Cragnoor agreed. “But I know what it is to be constantly two breaths away from death and what a comfort it is, then, to wrap yourself up in a cloak with your brother in arms and chase away hellfire for a while. Come to bed, Chris.”

Vexler’s own bed was comfortable beyond his wildest dreams, if you compared it to the cobblestones of Lower Murkford. But the king’s bed… He sank back into the piled furs and felt weightless, warm and cocooned as the heat from the fire dried his damp skin. This had to be what victory felt like: absolute satisfaction, underpinned by the chilling fear that one day it would all be torn away.

Removing his shirt was a cumbersome task for the king, his shoulder still troubling him, the bruises livid against his pale skin. But his trousers fell at the pull of a lace and Vexler drank in the sight of him.

Would he feel this hot, relentless desire pooling in his belly, down between his thighs, if Cragnoor wasn’t the king? If he was just another man, a soldier, a butler, a market trader? Vexler liked to think so. There was something impossibly erotic about a man who could both crush skulls with his bare hands and read without moving his lips. 

Something from his nightly fantasies was blending with reality as the king joined him on the bed, moving that big, powerful body over him, kissing the breath out of him. Vexler squeezed his eyes closed, expecting to be rolled over and simply taken.

“What do you want from me?” the king said, and Vexler blinked his eyes open once more to see those intense brown eyes level with his own as the fantasies of five years of desperate nights collided in his brain. 

“That,” the king said suddenly. “What was that? What were you thinking of?”

Lying would be easier than saying it, because what it was, was obscene: the king’s mouth stretched around his cock, taking him in, sucking him like a whore in an alley… “I serve at your pleasure, your highness.”

The king sighed and knelt back, rubbing thoughtfully at his injured shoulder. “Chris. I cannot serve either of our pleasures if you’re not here of your own free will, speaking your mind. I’m not interested in fucking a slave.”

Vexler set fear aside. “I was thinking of how goddamn hot you’d look with my cock in your mouth.” A public execution was probably worth getting to say that. “And your fingers… Your fingers in my ass.”

What he got for his trouble was a smile and a hint of a laugh. “That’s better. Move up.”

Vexler moved, absently stroking his cock and wondering under what exact circumstances any of the palace guards would burst in here in the middle of the night, because he couldn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that he would be getting very _very_ loud in the near future.

“Do you do this often?” he asked.

“No.” Cragnoor had slipped off the bed to slick up his hand with oil. Vexler’s strokes became a little more intent, seeing those long fingers glisten. “But I think of it often. Five years since I first saw you… So competent, so beautiful… Restraint really should be remarked upon as one of my virtues, don’t you think?”

Vexler shifted, flushing a little with pleasure and embarrassment. “You know, competent is great, but I prefer handsome to beautiful? Maybe ruggedly handsome? Just a little note there, if you’re planning to think about me in the future.”

“I shall ask my minister of the realm to record it thus.” 

It took a few moments for Cragnoor to position himself in a way that neither jarred his shoulder nor left half his body hanging off the bed. Then all he said was, “Don’t come,” and Vexler was engulfed in a new reality. A new reality that was intense enough if he only thought about it in terms of pure sensation, of gloriously wet heat and a clever tongue and a deep, persistent pressure he usually raced toward but now had to ignore. But if he thought for one second _this is the king blowing me, bowing to me,_ he had to bite his lips together and strangle his own cries. 

Cragnoor’s hand stroked his hip. “Relax.”

He couldn’t relax, but maybe he could breathe. He was good at breathing, had been doing it all his life. Just maybe not this deliberately as he struggled for control, every single fucking breath bringing with it another wave of pleasure. He couldn’t even comprehend exactly what it was Cragnoor was doing to him, sucking, licking, cradling his too-tight balls: it all blended together into white-hot sensation. 

Then Cragnoor slid a finger into him and Vexler knew exactly what that was. “Oh fuck,” he said, his tongue suddenly loose, following it up with a string of curses and babble as one finger became two, and three, and Cragnoor began stroking right in that secret, magical spot Vexler had until ten seconds ago been absolutely convinced no one else knew about, and all his words dissolved into long, desperate moans.

The sense of loss when Cragnoor pulled back was immense, although he was suddenly aware of how much he needed to breathe - something not helped by the way Cragnoor was now stroking himself hard so Vexler could think about having that full, swollen cock buried inside him. 

Cragnoor kept him on his back, fucking him like men fuck women, which Vexler was both surprised by and more than fine with, even as his thighs complained, because now he could see the mesmerizing sight of the king thrusting into him, stretching him in a way that ached gloriously. Usually in his fantasies he was on his belly, Cragnoor’s giant hand on the back of his neck, crushing him into the mattress, smothering his cries. But this… this was something else, and Vexler was fast realizing that the king was someone else, at least when he wasn’t cleaving limbs in two.

Vexler impulsively lifted his legs, wrapping them around Cragnoor’s back. “Come here,” he said, his mind clearing a little now that his body was getting used to the aching, all-consuming fullness of Cragnoor inside him. “Let me kiss you.”

Before, when they’d kissed, Vexler had only been trying to stay on his feet and mentally process some tiny fraction of what was going on. Now he was paying attention. Now he had some slight measure of control, a window where, as Cragnoor rocked steadily inside him, Vexler could touch his face, skin to skin, feeling the slight sheen of sweat or splashed bathwater, his fingertip tracing the almost invisible scar that curved down from the king’s hairline. 

“You’re mine,” he said in a whisper against his lover’s lips, the ultimate transgression.

Cragnoor smiled. “I’ve been yours for longer than you know.”

No climax, however blissful, could compare to the ecstasy of hearing those words.

***

He couldn’t be sure if he slept. It would have been so easy to lose minutes and hours wrapped up in his king’s body, lulled to dreams by soft furs, warmth from the fire, and Cragnoor’s steady breathing. But he spent a long time watching the fire, its heat making his skin tingle and glow. He felt light, effervescent, luminous. An evening spent being fucked by a nice, thick cock with a skilled owner could do that, of course, but there was still a tiny corner of his mind that wouldn’t be at all surprised if Cragnoor really was a god. _Part_ god, maybe, like one of those ancient loincloth-clad heroes whose mothers had been fucked by a-

“Duck?”

Vexler wasn’t sure if it was fear or frustration or disbelief that shot through his entire body at the sound of Chauncley’s voice. Beside him, Cragnoor just muttered, “Jesus Christ,” and pulled a whole deerskin over his head.

“Father? Oh, hello Lord Vexler. Have you seen a duck? I’ve lost Jemima.” Chauncley’s obliviousness surely had to be something he’d studied professionally. No mere amateur could be this unconcerned about finding a naked man in his father’s bed. Or, honestly, this concerned about finding a duck in the middle of the night.

Vexler spread his hands, trying to formulate words. “I… No? No. No ducks.”

“I see.” Chauncley surveyed the scene keenly. “Any cocks, perhaps?”

Sometimes the only way to react to Chauncley was to take a very deep breath and hope his attention wandered onto some other subject before you had to utter a single syllable in response. “Cocks?” Vexler said, adopting the cheerful imbecilic tone he’d employed all too often as a footman. 

“Cocks, yes. My father does love them. Majestic birds. And it is almost sunrise, so…” 

Understanding dawned. “Cockerels. You’re talking about cockerels. Roosters.” Vexler felt strongly that he deserved another promotion for outstanding valor in the face of this conversation alone. 

Chauncley nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, you know my dad. Stickler for punctuality. Early to rise and all that. The servants used to put one in my room but honestly they’re not the most reliable. Can’t even tell the time, stupid creatures.”

“Mm hm.” Did Cragnoor have a spare dukedom going, perhaps? Vexler wouldn’t mind being an earl. “I did see some ducks earlier, near my chambers. Maybe you should check there.”

“Ah, capital idea. Jemima got herself trapped in a suit of armor last week, silly duck.” 

Vexler’s eyes were bleary, but he could have sworn that Chauncley actually winked as he blessedly made his way out. He reached under the piled furs, extended a finger, and very deliberately poked the backside of his supreme, serene, most excellent majesty. “Couldn’t help me out there, huh?”

It seemed as though the wolf pelt sighed. Then Cragnoor pushed furs away from his head. “I have been dealing with that boy longer than anyone alive. And because I am a kind, benevolent king, I raised you to your current status so you too could experience the true joys of fatherhood.”

Just because he could, Vexler turned his head and kissed Cragnoor softly on the mouth, hand trailing down to feel his chest, the smattering of hair between his nipples. And, just because he could, he said: “Sometimes, your grace, you really fucking suck.”

Cragnoor laughed, pulling Vexler in. “Truly, we all have our roles to play.”

And so he spent the night in the king’s bed, piled with furs, as a roaring fire and a willing lover ignited a deeper warmth within him, a flame that might never go out.

For once, Vexler knew his place.


End file.
